The rise of Donald Trump has been met with an equal dose of surprise, shock and horror. Nothing short of a near political coup can stop Trump from clinching the Republican nomination. In all likelihood, the 2016 US presidential election will therefore be a contest between Trump and the former Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton.

Trump’s success has been surprising for many reasons. He is by far one of the most inconsistent outsiders to ever contest the race to the White House. His boisterous personality and his eclectic political standpoints have made him stand out from the other candidates – often for all the wrong reasons.

His controversial business deals and his public persona have made him difficult to ignore. He comes with a novelty factor which, coupled with a straight-talking no-nonsense attitude, attracted a number of supporters.

Yet these same factors have exposed and exacerbated his greatest weaknesses. He often comes across as being loud, vulgar and ignorant – a larger-than-life buffoon with a ridiculous comb-over and with very little substance to his political rhetoric. The media has been quick to dismiss him as an odd-job.

His every move is ridiculed and lampooned and his supporters are often depicted as naïve and ignorant individuals who support a “redneck” agenda. Some of this criticism has been flippant at best; in a recent foreign policy speech, he was ridiculed for the way he pronounced “Tanzania”.

In an earlier event he was criticised for having been endorsed by Sarah Palin in a rather bizarre and embarrassing speech.

Nonetheless, the levels of support he has managed to garner mean that Trump is not simply a novelty which can eventually wear out. He has successfully attracted the support of a considerable number of voters and the views of such individuals cannot be easily dismissed; that would be the dangerous and simplistic route to take.

Rather, those who do not share his positions must engage with his views in order to provide a coherent narrative which counters his claims and his proposals. Failure to do so would be pure intellectual dishonesty.

The support he enjoys also reveals a wider trend; an all-encompassing disenchantment with establishment figures, polished speeches and an electoral process which has become riddled with conventionality, hollow politically correct rhetoric and broken promises.

Trump is not a novelty which can eventually wear out

The trouble with Trump is that he is merely a symptom of a wider political and social malaise.

Analysts have deciphered an identikit of Trump supporters. Most of them tend to hail from the suburban or rural parts of the US; white, nostalgic about some mythical golden age of America, disenchanted with the Obama Presidency and fearful of the various social and demographic changes brought about by migration.

Trump soothes their fears with his rhetoric; he promises to fight Islamic State, he pledges to make America “great again”, he assures his voters that he won’t pander to foreign demands and he vows to halt migration. Indeed, he even claimed to be able to save humanity itself.

He offers solutions which are at once simplistic, utopic and unquantifiable. He speaks of NATO partners having to “pay their share”, he refers to the United States’ diminished “respect” on a global level and points to the “scores of recent migrants” who are charged with terrorism.

His supporters seem to be enthralled by the idiom he uses – simple, accessible and occasionally laced with profanities. It is a language which everyone can follow. Their views are incensed by the apparent hostility they elicit both in the US and abroad.

However, the dismissal of their views relies on one basic, but flawed, assumption - that the voter makes choices and decisions in a well-informed, rational, objective and dispassionate manner.

A growing body of scholarship is increasingly investigating this phenomenon. It is a controversial assessment which goes a long way to explain why democracies – in this case, one of the leading democracies – opt for certain political trajectories.

Rather than dismiss these views, an attempt should be made to understand and address their source. One would often find that they are fuelled by dashed hopes, increasing fear, latent prejudices, disappointment and inaction by the political class.

They are often exacerbated by the apparent helplessness of institutions to deal concretely with some popular concerns.

Trump has successfully reoriented the debate within the Republican Party. His views are also likely to take centre stage in the run-up to the presidential election. The tone and the outcome of the campaign will undoubtedly be diminished by his uncouth manner and off-the-cuff contributions.

The post-Trump Republican Party will only have one concrete source of hope; the wider conservative movement.

This movement must reclaim the narrative spun by Trump and reorient the debate based on the rich, but oft forgotten, intellectual patrimony accumulated throughout the years.

The thought of conservatives such as Russell Kirk, William F Buckley and Roger Scruton together with the political legacies of Abraham Lincoln, Theodore Roosevelt, Calvin Coolidge, Barry Goldwater and other political leaders are a good starting point.

André DeBattista holds a Masters of Arts in international relations.

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